I was born and grew up in Romania and emigrated to Toronto, Canada when I was around twenty years old. I’ve been living in Toronto ever since, going on 18 years now, so I lived half of my life in Europe and the other half in North America and this experience has definitely shaped up my perspective on art.
Ever since I can remember I was always surrounded by art, literature, poetry and photography.
It was my dad, Mihai, who first introduced me to photography back in Romania, and I recall he had built a dark room in our closet and we would spend hours developing photos. He showed me how to use the enlarger and how to frame subjects and all that fun stuff a kid finds so captivating. Here is the first photograph I took and developed myself when I was eight years old.
Where were you educated or trained, and what did you study there?
I come from a family of architects so I studied technical drafting for architecture and even got a diploma for it in Romania. In those times we drew everything by hand, as we had no access to Autocad or any other software, and in order to graduate I had to create a project and design a building from the bottom up. I remember designing and drafting a two-floor motel, but I did it mostly for the mark because by now I already knew I wanted to pursue film-making.